Searching and choosing products and services through computer-based search engines has become increasingly prolific in recent years. As such, content providers, i.e., those companies and/or individuals desiring content specific to their product(s) or service(s) to be displayed as a result of a given search engine query, e.g., advertisers, have begun to understand the value that placement of content items, e.g., descriptors or advertisements of their products or services, as a result of a search engine query can have on their sales.
For instance, if a user accesses a hosting web site, e.g., a search engine web site, and appropriately inputs a query for “Hawaiian hotels”, it is the user's desire to have a listing of hotels in Hawaii displayed as a result of the query. There are, however, numerous hotels in Hawaii and the order in which descriptors of these hotels are displayed as a result of the query can have a significant impact on whether or not the user will access information associated with a particular hotel, e.g., by selecting a particular content item or descriptor on the query results page which links the user to additional information about the associated hotel. For example, a user is more likely to access information associated with a hotel that is displayed in one of the top three positions in a vertical listing of hotel links that is displayed as a result of the query than to access the information associated with a hotel that appears at the bottom of the display list. As such, determining the order in which the various content items or descriptors appear in the displayed query results listing has become a task of great interest to search engine web sites and content providers alike, both of whom would like to maximize their revenue.
Typically, search engines permit content providers to bid for particular words and/or phrases, such words and/or phrases being referred to herein as “bid terms”, as a way for determining the order in which content items or descriptors which provide links to the content providers' information will be displayed. Bids are typically made as cost-per-click (CPC) commitments. That is, the content provider bids a dollar amount it is willing to pay each time a user selects or clicks on a displayed content item (e.g., an advertisement or image) as a result of the search engine query and thus accesses the information associated therewith.
One method that search engines may use to determine placement of different content descriptors or advertisements is to simply rank by the CPC bid and give the best or most prominent placement to the content provider bidding the highest amount. For instance, Hotel A may “bid” or agree to pay the search engine $1.00 for each user that accesses its information as a result of appearing in the search results of a given query while Hotel B may “bid” or agree to pay the search engine $1.50 for each user that accesses its information upon appearing in the query results. In this instance, Hotel B would “win” the bid and, accordingly, its content descriptor would be placed in a more prominent position on the web page on which the results of a search initiated by a query that exactly or partially matches the bid terms are displayed. For instance, a descriptor of Hotel B may be displayed in the first position of a plurality of vertically aligned content item positions that are displayed as a result of the query.
One drawback to this approach, however, is that it does not take into account the probability that a user will access the information associated with the advertisement (or other content) and, accordingly, all of the risk resides with the search engine. For instance, in an extreme example, a content provider may place an inordinately large bid for an advertisement that has a click-through-rate (CTR) of zero. Such scenario would result in the advertisement being placed prominently on the web page as the result of an appropriate query with no charge to the content provider and, thus, no profit to the search engine.
Another method that search engines may use to determine the placement of content items as the result of a particular query is to take the product of the content-provider's CPC bid and the probability that a user will access the information associated with the advertisement (or other content item) and provide the most prominent placement to the content provider having the highest product. In this way, the search engine may minimize its risk with respect to the above-described scenario wherein click-through probability was not taken into account and, accordingly, can attempt to maximize its expected profit. However, the probability that a user will access the information associated with a particular content item or descriptor may be difficult to determine, particularly when the content provider lacks a history with the search engine that can be empirically evaluated.
Additionally, in either of the above-described placement scenarios, content providers are unable to view the bids that are being placed by their competitors. As such, the only way that they can determine how their bids compare to their competitors is by examining the position they are awarded on the search engine web site relative to other content providers as a result of an appropriate query.
Accordingly, a method for determining relative placement of content items as the result of a search engine query wherein risk to the search engine may be minimized while its profit may be maximized would be desirable. Further, it would be advantageous if the relative placement of content items could be altered as the search engine developed a history with the content providers that is capable of being empirically evaluated. Additionally, a system and method for permitting providers to view information regarding their bids relative to their competitors prior to the ultimate placement being determined would be advantageous.